Here’s a short post about the different types of SoundCloud players that are available to us. I’m writing this as a follow up to Matt’s recent and excellent upgrade to the site.
As it stands, Matt has set up our home page so that it randomly displays 3 different audio recordings from the SGW Poetry readings. Personally I love these kinds of discovery features that help you find things on web sites, in databases, etc. that you weren’t initially looking for. Basically they promote serendipity. I think they are especially important for sites that have large amounts of content. The challenge is always to find ways to bring content up from the depths so that it gets some exposure on the surface. On that note, I encourage everyone to keep thinking of different ways we can distribute the recordings. Now that we have our recordings in the “cloud” it is very easy to make them accessible in a variety of different places and ways.
You may not realize that there are different SoundCloud players available to us. Right now there are 4 different ones. They come in 4 different sizes and have slightly different features and are all customizable to some extent (e.g. size, background images, etc.).
The four player types are:
1.
Name: Mini
Features: Just a basic and small player that shows the waveform, no comments or other bells and whistles.
2.
Name: Standard
Features : Medium sized, displays comments, allows sharing and embedding, downloading, provides info
3.
Name: Artwork
Features: Large sized and includes an image as the backdrop, doesn’t display comments, otherwise similar features as the Standard player
4.
Name: Playlist
Features: Identical to the Artwork player but allows you to set up a playlist